Food Porn: Chow Chocolat (Elmwood)

****Unfortunately since writing this article, Chow Chocolat has closed this location.

I’ll admit that I was skeptical when I heard that Chow Chocolat would be opening a new location on Elmwood. Their brief location at Walden Galleria didn’t work out so well and Elmwood is notorious for such high turn over (plus their Main Street location isn’t exactly that far away). It took Alli and I over a year to finally visit their Elmwood location but we’ve visited twice in the last 2 weeks and, even though we are a little late to the party, we’re glad we finally made it.

The interior design and atmosphere of Chow’s Elmwood location is nearly identical to their Main Street location. A simplistic design with wooden floors (albeit fake wood), wooden shelving filled with their artisan chocolates, chalk boards with a hand written menu and vintage couches and chairs. We fell in love with Chow Chocolat the first time we visited their Main Street shop, their hot chocolate is some of the best I’ve ever had and their fondue was great. Aside from being smaller, the Elmwood location has a slightly different menu. The Main street location had a much larger chocolate selection but Elmwood has delicious home made ice cream with some creative flavors that you don’t find everywhere. So even though the weather is starting to get colder and colder, Alli and I decided to make a late Sunday ice cream run.

Our first visit to Chow’s Elmwood location was a purely impulsive move. We had just finished having some happy hour drinks at Blue Monk and decided we needed something sweet. Walking into the dessert shop Alli quickly made a B-line to the chocolate bars and picked up one of their milk chocolate (pictured above) and one of their sea salt bars. Their milk chocolate is wonderful, very creamy with a strong, but not overwhelming, sweet taste. It’s some of the best milk chocolate you can find in Buffalo. Their sea salt bar was definitely something different, essentially it was their milk chocolate bar but sprinkled with salt. There wasn’t enough salt to change the texture of the bar but the contrast of the sweet chocolate and strong salt was something that caught me off guard. I could see some people really loving that combination, but for me it was a little too strong. Maybe in another form I would enjoy the combination but when I’m eating a chocolate bar I guess I like to keep it simple.

With our next trip we decided to go a couple hours after dinner and order something that we could enjoy while we sat on their comfy antique chairs and people watched. They have a pretty awesome ice cream list and it was actually really hard to decide on just one flavor to try. For $2.90 a scoop it’s pretty affordable too and our server was being pretty generous, so one scoop would probably satisfy your sweet tooth. Alli ordered a scoop of their Chocolate which had a wonderful creamy texture; it closer to fudge than any ice cream I’ve had lately. The flavor was also very rich as well, this wasn’t a subtle chocolate flavor whatsoever. I ordered their Aztec Chipotle Vanilla (pictured above) which had a really strong vanilla flavor but what I loved was the heat that slowly grew in the back of my mouth. If you’ve tried Lloyd’s Aztec Hot Chocolate or brownies, you’ve had a similar sensation.

We also tried their French Lemonade because of a recommendation on foursquare. It’s a simple drink of Perrier, a freshly squeezed lemon and sugar. The lemon flavor was much lighter then any lemonade I’ve had and the sugar was almost non existent, I was hoping it would taste more like the San Pellegrino Limonata that I’ve enjoyed in the past.

With so many more ice cream flavors to try (apricot serbert, thai curry coconut, etc) I know Alli and I will be back to try more flavors, regardless of how cold it is outside. I hope that this new location continues to stay strong during the colder months. While I’m not a coffee fan their hot chocolate is still hands down the best in Buffalo and can be combined with a variety of flavors such as peanut butter, caramel, etc (we re-confirmed this with some hot chocolate during our first visit). So next time you find yourself at one of Elmwood’s fine restaurants, save some room for dessert or coffee and try Chow’s very affordable and very delicious treats.